A Soon to be contradicted View of the Future
by Maxwellfan61
Summary: Hello, and welcome to Futurama Fanfiction 107. Course Description: After the Opera, the crew must make an important delivery that could change Fry's life forever. Suggested prerequisites are Futurama Season Four, several grains of salt, and Physics 313.
1. Chapter 1

**A Soon to be contradicted View of the Future**

**Part 1**

Tonight was the one night that Fry couldn't have afforded to go any less than perfectly. So, naturally, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. He lost his robotic hands, his opera was the laughing stock of New New York, and Leela barely even heard any of what he had managed to perform from it. Worst of all, he almost lost her to the Robot Devil forever. By all standards the night was a downright catastrophe. A catastrophe in all ways but one. She stayed. After he was rejected and lambasted by everyone else in the theater, she stayed to hear him finish. No robotic hands, no elaborate compositions, just heart.

Philip J. Fry and Turanga Leela walked out the back entrance of the Metropolitan House of Opera into the night. The streets were empty and silent, save for the clicking of Leela's heels on the sidewalk, and the only illumination came from apartment windows and the stars above. Fry looked up, and saw the millions of them shining down on him, like they always had. There were just as many things he wished he could say or do right then, but the hand grasped lightly in his told him that his boyish spontaneity could be suppressed for the time being. Fry gave Leela his jacket to shield her from the brisk November night, and she leaned close to him, accepting his arm around her waist. They continued walking in blissful silence through the streets of New New York back to Leela's apartment.

"Well, here we are," Fry said when they got to apartment 1I. Leela opened the door and walked inside.

"Are you coming in?" she asked, turning around after a few steps to see Fry still standing outside the doorway.

"Oh, who, me? Well, yeah," Fry said nervously, and made his way into the apartment the way an adventurer-archaeologist would enter a forbidden temple.

Leela sat down on the lone chair that furnished the room, and scooted to one side to make room for Fry. He followed her lead and sat beside her.

"Leela, I'm sorry all this had to happen to you," was all he could think to say.

"Don't apologize, Fry. You did everything perfectly," Leela said.

"But, but you're deaf! And the Robot Devil!" Fry protested, choking on his words.

"That was my fault for not telling you what happened to me," Leela said, trying to calm him down. "Besides, these robot ones will work until I can get them fixed."

"I guess you're right," Fry said, not wanting to argue with her more than he had to. "I wish you had heard more of the opera, though."

"Fry, it wasn't the opera itself that was important," Leela said, "it's what it showed me about you," she took his hands in hers, "and about myself." They looked into each other's eyes, and Leela scooted closer to him. For a moment they just sat there, until it seemed as if a switch was thrown, and their heads began to slowly draw towards each other. They closed their eyes, and Fry could feel Leela's breath before he-

"Leela?" The telescreen on the wall cut on. "Oh good, you're both there."

"Hermes?" Leela answered sternly, turning her head away from Fry and towards the viewer. "What are you calling about?"

"We just got a delivery that's top priority and needs to be sent out first thing tomorrow morning. Which means you have to be in a condition to fly the ship tomorrow, understand?"

"Can't it wait?" Leela protested.

"No," Hermes replied efficiently.

"Fine. Any more good news you want to give us?" Leela replied sarcastically.

"No, that should do it. Sleep tight, don't let the staplers bite." Leela turned off the screen.

"This Durans Duran."

"Come on Leela, we don't have to listen to him," Fry said, not particularly caring about what they were supposed to do, as usual.

"Fry, it's already past midnight," Leela said, "as much as I'd like to stay with you, I need to get to bed, and you need to get home." Fry lowered his head in dejection, and slowly stood up.

"Well, ok, but, do you think we could maybe make up for the lost time at, uh, dinner Friday night?" The last part of his question barely squeaked out of his larynx. He ground the ball of his foot into her carpet, and looked at her with apprehensive expectation.

Leela paused for a second before responding. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" Fry ran down the stairs from apartment 1I, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had finally done it. His prayers to whatever god he could remember the name of at the time had been answered, and he was cackling with such exuberance that some of Leela's neighbors thought he had gone insane. He thought he could have too, but he wasn't going to let the possibility spoil what had just happened. The rickety staircase shook under his steps, causing him to stumble and burst through the front door of the building struggling to remain upright. He surveyed the empty street before him, and then ran down the sidewalk, jumping and spinning in circles as he went. He even tried to swing on a lamppost, but he couldn't hang on and fell into the bushes beside the sidewalk with a dull crunch. As soon as he hit the ground he started to laugh again, pushing himself to his feet. This was the happiest night of his life.

Leela locked her door behind Fry and walked across her living room, toward the window she'd had put in a few months ago. She heard Fry's cries of joy echo through the building as she took off her gloves and pulled her hair out of its ponytail. She looked down from her window to see Fry stumble out onto the street and start jumping around, like a puppy imitating Gene Kelly. He was so cute when he was happy. She walked over to her bedroom after Fry danced his way out of sight, and closed the door to get ready for bed. Crawling under her covers, she looked at the picture of Fry on her nightstand, and then turned out the light.

------------

"Good news, everyone!" the Professor beamed to the Planet Express crew, who were begrudgingly gathered around the conference table the next morning. "Today, you'll be flying me to have Sunday brunch on Trihop Seven, the breakfast planet."

"You made us come in today for that?" Leela said, more than slightly put off. "You have a spaceship, fly there yourself."

"Why would I be going anywhere? What do you think I hired a delivery crew for? Now shut up, all of you, so I can tell you about the important delivery you have to make!" He pressed a button on the table's console, and the large, green tinted holographic image of a planet appeared in the center of the table. "This is Copenhagos h/2pi, where you will be delivering this block of ice-ten." He pointed to a large clear cube sitting in the corner of the room. "You must be careful not to let it touch water of any sort."

"Why?" Fry asked. "Will it irreversibly freeze other water?"

"No, it will make it explode!" the Professor said with the appropriate accompanying hand gestures. He then turned on the giant TV screen behind him. A movie began to play, showing a ship that looked very similar to the Planet Express Ship flying through space. "Long ago," the Professor said over the movie, "the first block of ice-ten developed was delivered to Copenhagos h/2pi." The ship landed on a lush, green planet, and three people got out: a woman, a man, and a robot. "However, something went terribly wrong." The woman and the robot rose over the peak of a large hill, consulting a map before descending the other side. The man, carrying the block on his back with a pair of ice tongs, staggered to the top, his legs wobbling under the weight. He stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow, and continued down the other side. However, he failed to look at his path carefully, and tripped over a projecting rock. He and the ice-ten both fell to the ground, the latter catching fire from contact with the plants on the ground. The delivery boy's companions watched as the man rolled past them down the hill, followed shortly by a skidding fireball. Technically, it was a firecube, but the observers weren't that concerned with formalities at the time. The woman and robot froze as they realized what was at the bottom of the hill: a river. By the time they could move to chase the block, it was in the water, and the movie screen was filled by a blinding light. "And that's how Copenhagos h/2pi became a desert planet," the Professor said with a smile as he turned the screen off. The crew looked nervously at one another.

"Wait," Leela asked, breaking the uneasy silence, "if it destroyed their planet the first time it was brought there, why would they want more?"

"I don't know, people don't tell us why they want things delivered!" the Professor answered, "But, I assume they would want to study it, seeing as they didn't get a chance the first time. Also, there'll be a package for you to pick up and bring back here. Now, off you go!"

------------

"Ready for entering the atmosphere of Copenhagos h/2pi, Captain," Fry announced from his navigator's seat.

"Thanks Fry," Leela replied, "but we've already entered their atmosphere. We'll be on the ground in less than five minutes."

Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, the Planet Express Ship flew over Copenhagos h/2pi's capital city of Copenhageen, passing signs for the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, a farmer's market with fresh quark in all six flavors, and Pauli's Personal Parking Place, before finally reaching their destination of General Parking (Pauli Excluded). The city itself was a sprawling collection of semispherical adobe buildings. They all shared the color of the sandy earth they were built upon, and few had any mark of special significance apart from differences in size.

"Okay, Fry," Leela said as the crew lowered from the cargo bay, "with the ice-ten secured to the hover dolly we should be able to avoid the disaster from the last time. You just need to take it to the Quantum Entanglement Station, and bring back what the Professor ordered. Bender and I will stay here and do whatever it is we do when you make deliveries on your own. Think you can handle that?"

"Yeah, no problem," he responded, and pushed the cart towards the city.

------------

"Fry, how could you?" Leela yelled, standing beside him outside the Quantum Entanglement Station.

"It looked like a bench!" Fry said.

"You almost destroyed their entire wave function!" Leela spat back at him.

"How was I supposed to know it would collapse if I sat on it?"

Leela put her hand to her eye and massaged her temples. "It's alright, we'll just go in, have them bill us for damages, get the Professor's order and go home."

"It's not like we ever make a profit on these trips anyway," Bender chimed in.

The trio walked inside the Entanglement Station, ice-ten in tow, and towards the back of the lobby to the reception desk. Sitting behind it was a man dressed in a cloak over a skintight suit with neatly parted gray hair. The nametag on the desk read Leonard Keynes.

"Ah, you must be the delivery from Planet Express," he said as they approached.

"Yes," Leela said, "and we're sorry about the mess we caused outside."

"Don't worry about it," Leonard interjected, "we can just pull another one out of our Hilbert space generator. It'll be fine. However, the order your Professor Farnsworth placed isn't quite filled yet, and I'm afraid it won't be until morning. In the meantime, feel free to show yourselves around, see the sights, and have a good time," he finished with a friendly smile.

"Wait, shouldn't there be _some_ sort of repercussion, or-"

"Not now, big boots," Bender interrupted, "there's a quantum casino across the street with Bender's name on it, and I'd like the chance to do something productive on a mission for once."

------------

Fry and Leela walked around the city, trying to find some less morally questionable activities than their robot companion was engaged in. They visited Enrico Fermi's tomb, strolled through Hyde Act Park in Little Bombay, and went for a ride on the Copenhageen Eye, the quadrant's largest supercolliding Ferris wheel. After a while, however, Fry had had all of the desert sun he could take, and they ducked into a small, dingy café. The type where there's only one row of seats and a plastic countertop over the bins holding possible ingredients for a meal. An elderly woman stood behind it, along with a young man who was presumably her son.

"Velkommen! Hvad kunne jeg blive jer? _(Welcome! What can I get you?)_" the woman asked them.

"Wha-huh?" Fry said, bewildered.

"Fry, not everyone speaks English everywhere. I think she wants to know what we want to eat," Leela said.

Fry looked at the selection of foods. Seeing something he thought looked pretty good, he tapped on the glass over it.

"Jer savn den kogt gris kugler? _(You want the boiled hog gonads?)"_ the woman asked. Fry nodded affirmatively.

"Also, we need something to drink." Fry cupped his hand around his mouth, moving it up and down. "Drink, you know, drink?"

"Han ønsker hen til indrømme nogen en _hvad_ for nu? _(He wants to give someone a _what_ now?)_" the younger man asked in shock.

"Ikke, jer gnaven, han ønsker et eller andet hen til drik! _(No, you idiot, he wants something to drink!)_" the woman said exasperatedly, and shooed her son over towards a stack of cups. He set two of them down on the counter before he pulled a sandslug, a pan, and a small cube of ice-ten out of a drawer. He put the slug in the pan before grating the ice-ten over it, thinking of how lucky they were to have gotten a new shipment that day. As the shavings accumulated, the slug slowly fizzled into a pool of slightly green-tinged liquid, which he poured into the glasses.

"Bon Appetit," he said, setting them down in front of Fry and Leela.

"I'll never understand what these guys are saying," Fry said as Leela picked up her glass and took a sip.

"Ugh, this stuff tastes awful!" Leela said, her face contorted in disgust.

"Maybe this is how they normally have water here, and you have to ask for the kind that doesn't taste horrible by name," Fry conjectured, "you know, like Europe." He took a drink of his own and had to struggle to keep from spitting it back out.

"Oh well, it's better than nothing." Leela sighed and drank another mouthful.

A short time later, the old woman brought out their dinners, which fortunately were more palatable than their drink. Leela and Fry sat and ate, talking about mostly inconsequential things. Leela seemed to actually be having a good time, but as they finished up eating Fry could tell that something unusual was going on.

"Leela, are you feeling alright?" he asked her. "You actually laughed at my last joke."

"Me feel… fine," Leela said slowly.

"Okay, I just wanted to make sure."

------------

Walking back through the streets of Copenhageen, the sun was beginning to go down. The dark made it increasingly difficult for Fry to find his way back to the ship in the unfamiliar city, on top of keeping Leela under control, who apparently had lost the ability to do so herself.

"Fry! Fry! Lottery tickets!" Leela yelled, running to the window of a 711.

"Leela, how many times do I have to tell you no?" Fry said. "Because I don't want to make it five." He pulled her back from the window and kept her walking down the street. "Seriously, I'm beginning to think that you're-"

Fry suddenly fell to the ground with a whump, out cold. Leela looked around her, noticing Fry's sudden absence from her line of sight.

"Fry? Fry? Where Fry?" she called out, turning around in circles. Still seeing no sight of him, she yelled his name again, before looking down.

"Oh, there Fry," she said, and stepped off of his windpipe.

**------------**

Leela awoke the next morning lying in her bed on the Planet Express Ship, still in her clothes from the previous day. Getting out of bed, she realized she couldn't remember anything that had happened the night before. She and Fry had stopped somewhere for dinner, and then it was just a blank. Intending to go find Fry in hopes of an explanation, she opened her cabin door, but soon realized she had already found him as he was passed out on the floor outside her room.

"Fry, wake up," Leela said, kneeling down to prod him. He didn't stir.

By now, Bender had finished his sleep routine, and walked out of him and Fry's cabin. "Here, let me help you with that," he said, and promptly began kicking Fry in the ribs.

"Bender!" Leela said.

"Ah, fine. It's not like it worked last night, either. By the way, you each owe me fifty bucks for getting you back here."

"Why? What happened last night? I can't remember a thing."

"Well," Bender said, reeling into a flashback, or a frame tale, whichever is technically correct, "it all started as I was leaving the quantum casino entirely of my own free will…"

------------

"I don't care how many worlds your interpretation has, you aren't setting foot in this place again in any of 'em!" a security officer yelled to Bender after throwing him into an alleyway behind the establishment.

"Stupid cheating detectors," Bender mumbled, standing up. "Where else am I supposed to get the three robo-food groups of booze, blackjack, and hookers all in one convenient location?"

With residual frustration, Bender walked through the dimly lit streets, looking for places to buy beer and people to pick-pocket to pay for it. He was about to go into the local ABC store, endorsed by The Jackson Five, Andrew Jackson, and the number four, when he saw Fry and Leela down the street. He was going to go in anyway, but he heard Leela yell, "Bender! Bender, help!" Disappointedly, he walked over to them.

"Bender, Fry no move," Leela said, holding a limp Fry up by the arm.

"Well it's not my problem."

"You take Fry," Leela said, handing Bender Fry's arm, "me need buy timeshare."

She was about to walk off when Bender stopped her. "Wait a second, if you're going to waste your money, why not spend it on me, your lovable pal, Bender?"

Bender puffed away on a recently acquired fine cigar, and led Leela, who was carrying a case of whiskey under one arm and dragging Fry through the gutter with the other, down the street. Bender opened her wallet and looked inside.

"It looks like you spent all your money, chumpette," he said. "You know, you're a lot more fun when you're impressionable."

"Bender, me need sleep," Leela said, tiring from her duty as pack mule.

"Oh fine, we'll go back to the ship. Not like we can do much else around here, anyway."

------------

"…and that's about when Burt Lancaster showed up," Bender said. "I decided to let him clean up the situation and snuck you and sleeping beauty back here to safety."

"Alright," Leela said, "you can tell me what actually happened later. Right now we need to figure out what's wrong with Fry before we-" There was a loud knock on the hull of the ship. "-have to take home the Professor's order."

Leela got up and walked down to the cargo bay, riding down on the elevator. Waiting for her were two men in coveralls. They had a dolly with a large lead box, covered in hazmat labels.

"Is this the Planet Express Ship?" one asked.

"Yes," Leela responded.

"Okay, we just need you to sign here, here and here, and you'll be all ready to take this back to Mr. Farnsworth."

Leela walked back into the ship, reviewing the delivery papers as she went. When she got back to the hallway, Fry was gone. She looked around, but didn't see him.

"What up?" Fry said, stepping out of his cabin.

"Fry," Leela said turning around, startled, "you woke up."

"Yeah, I guess I passed out sometime last night. That stuff we had to drink must have been really good."

"From what little I can remember," Leela said, "it was the worst tasting thing I've ever had."

"I meant good as in got us really drunk."


	2. Chapter 2

**A Soon to be contradicted View of the Future**

**Part Two**

The Planet Express Ship lowered into the hangar, touching softly to the ground. Hermes, Amy, Zoidberg and the Professor walked down the stairs to the hangar floor, where they met Fry, Leela, and Bender as they walked out of the ship.

"Hooray, my friends have returned from another fascinating adventure!" Zoidberg warbled with excitement.

"Actually," Leela said, "everything went surprisingly well."

"You mean you three actually went somewhere without pissin' someone off or runnin' up medical bills? I didn't think it could happen!" Hermes said.

"Hey Professor, what's in the box?" Amy asked as Bender brought it out of the ship.

"A cat, among other things," he responded.

"There's a cat in there?" Leela said, shocked. "But it's completely sealed! How do you know if it's even alive?"

"You don't! That's the point of having the cat!" the Professor retorted, putting his hands on his hips.

------------

"I still don't see what the big deal with the shower was," Fry said as he, Leela and Bender were getting dressed in the locker room.

"Fry," Leela said, "just because I agreed to go on a date with you doesn't mean you automatically get to do everything naked with me."

"It did for all those other guys," Bender said. Leela narrowed her eye, but decided to let the comment pass.

"I'm sorry, Leela," Fry said. "Hey, Bender and I were going to have an All My Circuits drinking game, you want to join in?"

"No thanks," Leela replied, "I need to get some work done on the ship."

Heading out of the locker room, Leela went over to the ship and Bender walked up out of the hangar, but Fry paused for a second. He had a strange feeling, but he couldn't tell what it was exactly, or what he was feeling it about. He stood for a second, trying to get a handle on it. Suddenly, he knew.

"Leela, get away from there!" Fry yelled to her.

"Huh?" Leela said, adjusting one of her robotic ears as she looked up from her toolbox.

"Duck!" He ran across the hangar and jumped, tackling her and sending them both skidding across the floor. Leela waited for several seconds, but nothing happened.

"Fry, this isn't funny," Leela said, crawling out from under him. Her skepticism was broken by an explosion from the Professor's laboratory, sending the Professor clear over the conference room table, and a large piece of machinery shot out and landed right where Leela had been working earlier, crushing her toolbox.

"Oh my god…"

"Whoopsie. Sorry, everyone!" the Professor said loudly.

"Oh my god," Leela said again. "Fry, how did you know that was going to happen?"

"I dunno," Fry replied, "I just sort of knew."

"Yeah, I guess it's pretty easy to tell when something the Professor's doing is going to go wrong."

"No, that's not it," Fry corrected her. "It's like I knew what was going to happen before it did. I knew if I didn't get you to move you'd have been crushed."

"You mean like, you saw the future?"

"Yeah, I guess."

------------

The Planet Express crew found themselves yet again in Dr. Zoidberg's office, with Fry on the examination table in his underpants. The Professor was waving a rod shaped instrument around Fry, studying him intently.

"Well, this curling iron doesn't show any abnormalities in Fry's body, and neither did the hair dryer," the Professor said, tossing it to the ground. "Do you think it could have been something you ate? A prescient pie or an existential gumbo perhaps?"

"Well, Leela and I had dinner at a seedy restaurant last night where we didn't know what any of the food was."

"Hmm, that could be a possibility," the Professor said. "Now to determine if that's the cause, we'll need to cut you open and remove your intestinal tract. Leela's too, for comparison."

"Wait, can't you just take a urine sample?" Leela asked, while Fry clutched his abdomen.

"Oh, sure, if you want to pass up a perfectly good opportunity for disembowelment."

------------

"Oh boy," Dr. Zoidberg mumbled sadly under his breath as he walked into the room where Fry, now dressed, as well as Leela, Amy, Hermes and Bender were waiting to hear the test results. He turned to address the group and cleared his throat. "I'm afraid I have bad news. Although all of Fry and Leela's tests showed that they're perfectly healthy, in my medical-type opinion they have no more than twenty-four hours to live!"

Bender jumped to his feet from his seat on the counter. "Zoidberg, how many times do I have to tell you? Postmodernism does not belong in medicine!" he yelled, emphasizing the last few words by hitting Zoidberg over the head.

"Ow, your hitting is making me hurt, it is! Curse your causality!"

"Now, now, everyone," the Professor said, shuffling into the room, "the urine samples actually showed they both recently ingested high concentrations of complex silicates bonded to ice-ten! Of course, I have no idea what that means, but we can poodle it and see what it comes up with."

"Poodle it?" Fry asked.

"You know, searching the internet from Leela answered.

"I'm on it," Hermes said, and pulled up a hologram of a toy poodle from a projector over one of the counters.

"Here boy," he said to it, "I want you to find 'silicates' and 'ice-ten.'"

The dog ran off, disappearing for a few seconds, before returning with a list of results in its mouth.

"Good boy," Hermes said. "Now, drop it." The dog didn't budge. "Drop it boy, come on." It still made no response. "Hand it over you green snake!" Hermes said tersely and reached into the hologram to pull the results out of the poodle's mouth. A struggle ensued, but several minutes later Hermes walked back over to the Professor and handed him the results.

"Hmm," the Professor said looking over the results, "it says in this Tikipedia article that both of you consumed what is known as the Cocktail of Life, a drink native to Copenhagos h/2pi created from melting a sandslug with ice-ten. Oh lord, it's LSD all over again. You develop something for science and the next thing you know it's out on the street and people are singing songs about bearded rainbows. Anyway, ingestion can cause drooling, nose-picking, pants wetting, and generally acting like a moron for several hours after ingestion due to delta brainwave suppression, with a person having no recollection of what transpired."

"Well that sounds like Leela last night," Bender said, getting a nasty glare from Leela, "but not Fry."

"That's odd," Hermes said, "every semi-sentient creature in the universe has a delta wave, shouldn't they both have been affected the same way?"

"You think something's wrong with Fry?" Amy asked.

"Indeed. However, I didn't find anything else extraordinary in Fry's excrement, so more tests are in order." The Professor said gleefully. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a scanner with an oblong looped antenna off of the handle. For some reason Leela thought it looked awfully familiar, although she couldn't quite say why. The Professor pointed it at Fry's head, looking at the scanner's readout.

"Sweet mamma-jamma!" the Professor exclaimed. "Fry, your brain completely lacks the delta brainwave!" The crew gasped.

"What, how? I mean, I don't feel any stupider," Fry stuttered.

"Of course you wouldn't, you've never had a delta wave to begin with. It's not being suppressed, your brain can't make one!"

"But how's that even possible, mon?" Hermes said in disbelief. "Without a delta wave, he shouldn't even be able to brush his teeth! Oh, wait."

"Well, this would explain a lot," Leela said.

"But what does this have to do with me seeing the future?" Fry asked.

The Professor looked back at his gizmometer. "It seems that due to your altered brain structure, instead of destructively interfering with your delta brainwave, the ice-ten compounds constructively interfered with your quantum pilot brainwave!"

"My what?"

"Your quantum pilot wave," the Professor said, "it's what carries your consciousness through the fourth dimension. Most people have relatively weak wave signals, but some can be blessed with a stronger wave, allowing them to attain leaps of mad scientific wonder or host their own weekly talk show segments. Yours, however, has had its amplitude boosted so greatly you can do more than just predict what people want to hear, you can actually predict possible future timelines!"

"My god," Fry said.

"So Fry," Bender said, slinging an arm around his friend's shoulders, "how about you and me head down to the horse track with your new-found powers of foresight?"

"I don't know, Bender. I really need to go home and think about all of this."

"How about I walk you home, okay?" Leela volunteered, taking Fry's hand as they walked to the door.

"Aw, Fry, come on!" Bender yelled after them.

"Now, now, Bender," the Professor said, putting a hand on Bender's shoulder, "let the freaks of nature walk in peace."

------------

"Fry, I'm surprised," Leela said as she and Fry walked back to Robot Arms, "you handled yourself very maturely with Bender back there."

"Hey, it's not like I do _everything_ he tells me to," Fry replied, trying to sound a little hurt. "Leela, look!" he said, pointing to a building in the distance. She stopped and watched him as he put his hand in the air so it looked like it was sitting on the building's roof. He lowered his hand, and the building fell beneath it, imploding in a cloud of dust. Fry chuckled mischievously.

"Fry, you really do have to treat this seriously," Leela said after the display, "who knows what consequences knowing the future could have?"

"I'm just getting the hang of controlling it, what's the big deal? Besides, if anything was going to go wrong, I'd already know about it."

Leela shook her head in exasperation, and they continued walking.

------------

The next day, the crew sat around the conference table, watching Hermes explain a graph of the company's growth in dairy transport. There'd never been a dairy delivery in the company's history, so it really wasn't of much interest. Suddenly, Fry burst into laughter, keeling over in his chair. The rest of the group stopped and looked around to try and find something funny, but couldn't. Hermes returned to his chart, picking up a pointer to aid his explanation. Unfortunately, when he went to make an indication, he put too much into the backswing, and stabbed himself in the eye.

"Sweet tsetse fly of Paraguay, the pain!" Hermes cried out, dropping the pointer and clasping his hands over his eyeball. Everyone else broke into laughter, except for Fry.

"Eh," he said jadedly, "it's just not as funny the second time around."

Hermes hurried to the kitchen to find an icepack, and was replaced at the head of the table by Professor Farnsworth.

"Good news! You have a delivery to make to the Galaxy of No Return!"

------------

"Who'd have known that the Galaxy of No Return just meant you can never return to that galaxy?" Leela pondered as she flew the ship back to Earth. Fry raised his hand. "Fry, just stop. I mean, don't you think you're getting a little- Oh lord."

"What is it?" Bender asked.

"It's the Nimbus," Leela said with disgust.

"Oh, you mean the ship with that guy you slept with?" Bender said.

"Yes," Leela said angrily, "but hopefully I can swing a few parsecs towards Betelgeuse and stay off of their scanners."

Fry sat up straight in his seat, his eyes gathering a look of shocked realization. "Leela, I know this is going to sound crazy," he said, "but we need to get to the Nimbus. Now."

"Fry, what are talking about?" Leela asked.

"Future vision thing!" Fry said. "If we don't get there soon, everyone on the ship's going to die!"

"Our ship or their ship?" Bender asked.

"Their ship," Fry answered.

"Damn it, I have to spend more time saving other people's asses?" Bender complained.

"Well we can't just fly by and let it happen," Leela said. "Let's go."

------------

The Planet Express Ship set down in the Nimbus's docking bay, where the crew was met by DOOP's most illustrious captain.

"The lovely lady Leela, what a voluptuous surprise," Zapp said. "So, your burning desire has led you to come crawling back to the Zapper at last."

"Not exactly," Leela said sternly. "We're here because something terrible is going to happen soon."

"We?" Zapp looked to Fry, who was standing anxiously next to her. "That _would_ be terrible," he said sexfully. "Fortunately, I think there's enough room in the Lovenasium to accommodate all of your erotic fantasies. Kif, ready an extra bottle of champaggen for my chamber."

"Leela, we don't have time for this," Fry interrupted. "Something in the Love-nasal's about to make this whole place explode!" He grabbed Leela's arm and took off running.

"Hmm, must not want to lose the mood," Zapp figured, and ran daintily after them.

------------

Fry burst into the Lovenasium, Leela following him shortly. He looked around the room, trying to pinpoint the danger. His gaze came to rest on the bathroom, and he walked over to it.

"In here, the toilet," he said, opening the door. Leela walked over and looked into the room. Upon entering she found herself face to face with a toilet bowl stuffed to the brim with velour briefs.

"What are you doing in there?" Zapp inquired, having caught up with them. "I keep all of my sexcapade-related items next to the bed."

"Zapp," Leela asked, "why is your toilet filled with underpants?"

Zapp looked around nervously, remaining quiet for a minute. "Kif was on shore leave last week and I, I didn't know what to do!" he tried to explain pathetically. Leela turned her attention back to the toilet of doom and scanned it with that thing she wears on her wrist.

"Oh no," she said. "This says that the toilet is hooked directly into the Nimbus's main engine. An overload like this could have caused a… catastrophic failure."

"Wait, why would someone have their toilet hooked up to a spaceship's engine?" Fry asked.

"Ameche, when you're in a position of power, you have to exercise that power with everything that you do," Zapp said proudly.

"Come on, Fry," Leela said. "Let's get someone to clean this up, and then burn that pile of pictures next to the toilet."

"Way ahead of you on the pictures Leela," Fry said. "I'll handle it personally."

"No you won't," Leela said.

"Damn," Fry muttered, and walked out of the bathroom as Leela stared him down.

------------

That night, Zapp sat alone in his robe on the bridge of the Nimbus, a cigarette's red glow illuminating his face, and a bottle of comfort liquor in his hand. The Planet Express Crew had long since left, and the ship was sitting still, its engine shut off for maintenance from the toilet fiasco. The telescreen flicked on in front of him, and once his eyes adjusted to the light, he made out that it showed the inside of the Oval Office.

"Brannigan," President Nixon barked from the screen, "why haven't you started the invasion of Arabacus 12?"

"Well, we've been having some uh, minor delays due to a mysterious incident with the ship's engine," Zapp said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Nixon demanded.

"That guy with the bad hair came onto the ship saying he could 'see the future,' and that the ship was about to explode or something," Zapp replied with little interest. "Sure enough it was, and I didn't even have a chance to get the vixen Leela…"

Zapp kept talking, but Nixon wasn't listening to him. "Ehrlichman's ghost, someone who can see the future? Aroo, I'd never have to deal with that Watergate crap again! Brannigan!" he said, pulling Zapp out of his oratorical meandering. "I want you to bring me that man!"


	3. Chapter 3

**A Soon to be contradicted View of the Future**

**Part Three**

Fry looked in the mirror, straightening the collar on his turtle neck before donning his dressy-casual brown jacket. It was Friday evening, and he was almost ready to leave for Apartment 1I. It had been a busy week, three deliveries instead of the usual one, the last one being to Helicon, and wasn't that much to talk about, just a big library or something. Besides, he had other matters on his mind, mostly concerning tonight. Despite his deepest curiosity, he managed to keep himself from looking into the future about it. Leela didn't seem to like him doing it that much anyway, and if he used it to make sure their date went well, wouldn't that be just as bad as having the worms?

A few minutes of walking later, Fry rapped on the door to Leela's apartment. She opened it, stepping into the hallway in an uncharacteristically reserved manner. Crossing the threshold, one of her robotic ears caught on the doorjamb, knocking it out of place.

"Rats," she mumbled as she adjusted it back into place, "I can't believe I haven't had a chance to get my ears fixed yet."

"We can, you know, do that now if you really want to, or-"

"No, Fry, it's alright. The Ear-O-Mat's closed by now anyway. Let's just go to dinner."

------------

"…and then he actually tried to tell me that sleeping with another woman was a compliment on his planet. He was from Earth!" Leela ranted, holding a forkful of her Radioactive Radish Con Carne, one of Elzar's specialties. "But you probably don't want to hear about that."

"No, I do. It sounds a lot like that time when I found my girlfriend in bed naked with that professional wrestler, but they were just giving each other massages," Fry said.

Leela smirked. "You know, I thought that since we spend all our time together at work, we'd never have anything to talk about. I'm sort of glad I was wrong."

"Me too." Fry smiled back, their gazes locking for a moment before they both shyly returned to their meals. Almost as soon as they did, there was a commotion at the front of the restaurant. Elzar could be heard complaining loudly, and many of the patrons turned to see what the problem was. Leela did so as well, only to find what was possibly the last thing she wanted to see that night: Zapp Brannigan striding through the restaurant towards their table.

Leela groaned as he drew nearer, Kif following close behind him. "What do you want?"

"As much as I would like to join you for dinner and 'other things'," Zapp told her, "I'm here for that pitiful excuse of a mate you keep around with you."

"Hey, I'm a really good excuse for a mate!" Fry retorted.

"We'll see about that," Zapp said, "but for now you're coming with me."

"What do you want with Fry?" Leela asked, retaining her no-nonsense attitude toward dealing with Zapp.

"I informed the President of his powers of primo-nation mere hours after you left the Nimbus in a blast of hot, steamy seduction. He charged me then with Fry's apprehension, and that's just what I'm going to do." Zapp took Fry by the forearm, who motioned his hand slicing across his neck.

"Wait, that was two days ago," Leela said, conspicuous in her ulterior motives, but her target was not a master of subtlety. "Why wait until now?"

"We stopped at the Galactic Laundromat, and there were some… _delays_," Kif said.

"Who knew that clothes had washing instructions on them?" Zapp said. "Each underpant had to be washed individually, and fortunately Kif was just the wiggly green thing to do it."

Leela used their explanation as a useful distraction, darting to Fry and prying him from Zapp's grasp. The DOOP Captain looked around, finding that the now-fugitive man and his buxom accomplice had disappeared.

"Kif," Zapp said authoritatively, "it seems we've been bamboozled."

------------

Fry and Leela sprinted through the streets, trying to put as much distance between themselves and Zapp as possible. Fry couldn't see the details, but he could tell that horrible things would come of being apprehended by Nixon. Neither he nor Leela really needed to see the future to deduce that, but it reaffirmed their worst fears. Given that they were now on the run, they had no choice but to continue; there was no turning back. They rounded a corner, and Fry burrowed headlong into a hard, grey chest plate.

"Bender!" Fry exclaimed, shrugging off the impact and pushing himself to his feet.

"Hey meatbags, what's with all the running?" Bender inquired.

"We're trying to escape from Zapp. We need to keep moving," Leela said before grabbing Fry and taking off running again.

"Ooh, criminal activity, eh? Why didn't you say so?" Bender said, and ran to keep pace with them. Not knowing any better place to go, they made for the Planet Express Building.

-----------

"We can't stay here. We can't stay on Earth. We need to leave," Fry said as they walked into the building.

"But where would we go?" Leela asked. "We can't just abandon everything like that."

"But Leela, if we don't-"

"Fry, it's not that simple. What about our jobs? Or Nibbler, or my parents? Some of us have things we can't just leave behind at the drop of a hat."

"We have to, Leela," Fry said, taking her hand, "believe me."

"Alright," she said sadly, "just give me some time to get things settled. We'll meet back here in an hour."

"You might want to leave sooner than that," Bender said, motioning towards the window. They could see Zapp crossing the street towards the building, a troop of soldiers behind him.

The trio ducked under the conference table to watch from a more hidden position, and saw that they had begun using a battering ram on the unlocked front door. Leela grabbed the ship's keys from the table as they sprinted to the hanger and hit a button on the key ring. The ship's stairs descended with a pair of beeps and flash of the headlights, and a few seconds later they were leaving the atmosphere.

"That way!" Fry pointed, vaguely in the direction of Saturn, visibly losing himself to his premonitions. Leela turned the ship and gunned the accelerator.

"I think we should have lost them," Leela said as they left the solar system. "It'll take them days to track us down, maybe a week if they didn't pick up our trajectory when we left Earth."

"So that means we're scot-free, right?" Bender asked, lighting a cigar.

"I doubt it," Leela answered. She glanced at Fry, who was absently looking around the bridge, his eyes glazed. He sat there for several minutes, longer than Leela had ever seen him do nothing for before. She was just about to get up to see if he was alright when he seemed to wake from his state.

"Guys," Fry said, "I know what we have to do."

------------

Hermes tucked the folded pages of the New New York Times business, crime, and general naughtiness section under his arm and strolled out of the restroom. There had been a somewhat entertaining article on purging yourself of any sense of moral decency, but it was just the same stuff they'd been teaching the upper-middleclass in universities since the Stupid Ages. On a much higher note, the S&P 5,000,000 had hit 486,000, and the Nasdaquiri was up 53 points. His investments had been wise, as always, and he was off to celebrate. However, as he hummed a down-home voodoo tune walking through the conference room, he felt that something wasn't quite right. They didn't have any more deliveries this week, yet he saw that the ship was gone. He groaned to himself; it looked like the crew had decided to commandeer company property for personal use again. Upon further examination, he noticed that the front door was ajar, and someone had scrawled "Kilroy was here" on the wall. He spied a red crustacean lurking in the corner of the room, and his face hardened into a scowl.

"What happened here?" Hermes demanded.

Zoidberg whimpered at the bureaucrat's menacing tone before uttering a response. "We were attacked by the Scots! There were many men in skirts, why not, and friends Fry, Leela, and Bender took the ship to escape. They must have wanted to apprehend Fry for his treason against their country!"

"What?" the Professor yelled, walking into the room, Amy following behind him, pulling pieces of green gunk off her sweat suit. "They can't just take the ship without permission! They have to sit around, talk about what they're going to do in front of the rest of us who don't even care, and _then_ take the ship without permission."

"Is it that big of a difference, then?" Amy asked.

"No, not really," the professor responded calmly, "but it's more polite for them to act like we could get involved if we wanted to." He then turned on the giant telescreen and patched through to the Planet Express Ship. Leela was seated with her back to the pilot's console talking to Fry, who was sitting in the navigator's seat. Bender was in the back corner not paying much attention.

"…but first we should turn off all of our communications equipment so they can't get a lock on our posi-" Leela cut herself off on noticing that the communication screen had descended behind her. "Great." She said, and turned to face the screen.

"What the hell are you doing with my ship?" the Professor fumed.

"Fry's ability to see the future got out," Leela answered.

"It was awesome!" Fry said. "They were all like 'We're gonna get you!' and we were like 'Nuh-uh.' and then we ran and Leela flew the ship and it was all 'Fscheeewww fooooooo foom!' and I was seeing what we should do next in the future and-"

"Fry! You've been trying to see the future?" the Professor said, shocked.

"Well, yeah," Fry said. "That's what you do when you can see the future, right?"

"You fool! If you probe too much into the future, your quantum pilot wave could become entangled with matter in a different temporal state than your own. The causal paradox could rip a hole in the space-time continuum, dooming the universe to terrors we can't even imagine!" The crew gasped.

"I told you this was dangerous!" Leela said, turning off the communicator.

"You know, if you were looking into the future," Bender postulated, "couldn't you have seen that that conversation was going to happen?"

"I dunno," Fry said, "I just knew he was going to tell us something important, I didn't know what he was gonna say. Besides, we've got what I already saw. Bender, you're still going to try and stop Nixon, and Leela and I are still going to go into hiding."

"So why do I get the hard job again?" Bender asked.

"Because Fry needs someone to protect him, not someone who'll put up flyers trying to sell his legs."

"It was his arms, thank you very much. Legs probably would've been a better idea, though, he's had them cut up fewer times."

Leela sighed. "How much longer 'til we get to Kusanagi Three?"

------------

"Now gentlemen," President Nixon's head said, sitting on his desk in the Oval Office, "as we all know, elections are coming up, and I need to know the straight facts about what I should do."

"Well," one of the half-dozen advisors he was addressing responded, "you seem to have lost the robot vote since that fiasco in the Galapagos, but you did pick up some of the extreme environmentalists. So basically, your chances of reelection are nonexistent."

"I wasn't _asking_ you, damn it," Nixon gruffed. "I was going to tell you that I've found a way to make sure I stay in office, a way to make sure of everything." A tiny mechanical arm reached out from the side of Nixon's jar and pressed a button on the desk. A holograph appeared in the middle of the table of Philip J. Fry. "This man can predict the future." His small audience stared in awe at the ordinary-looking young man, several denying it was true.

"I know it's hard to believe," Nixon said, "but I have it on the word of Captain Zapp Brannigan that he's the real deal, and it's been verified with his ship's records. With him under my control, I could rule the whole damned universe, and I'd never have to worry about losing my power."

"Are you sure it wasn't just coincidence, or some sort of scam?" one of the men said. "This is a pretty big long shot to bank on."

"Ah, but there's the beauty of it. Even if he turns out to be some low-life hack, it doesn't matter. All we'd need to do is prop him up so that people believe his crap, and we just have him predict whatever the hell we want. The predictions will come true, just because the people think they'll come true." Nixon paused to let what he'd said sink in, until the silence was broken by the ring of a telephone. He switched the hologram to show the bridge of the Nimbus, Zapp's bloated form filling the screen.

"So, you've acquired the objective?" Nixon asked him.

"Not exactly," Zapp responded.

"Is there a problem?" Nixon asked, becoming suspicious.

"Well, they sort of got away," Zapp said, putting the last two words in finger-quotes.

"What do you mean they got away?" Nixon yelled as Zapp began squirming uncomfortably. He began to speak, but was cut off by the President. "I don't care what excuses you have! Get more ships, more men, whatever you need, just make sure you find him, damn it!"

"So," one of the advisors said after Nixon turned off the hologram, "do you want us to put the plumbers on speed dial just in case?"

"Aroo," the President replied sadly.

------------

Kusanagi Three drifted slowly out of sight behind the Planet Express Ship, Bender now alone at the helm. He was still perturbed about having to take the hard end of the job, and now he didn't even have Fry to push around anymore when he got bored. And, contrary to what Leela would have people believe, flying a spaceship is very boring most of the time. What could he do to entertain himself? With sudden inspiration, Bender turned around and started huffing and puffing, twisting his arms around rapidly. He turned back and set his creation on the command console: a balloon animal. He looked over it, smiling emptily, until his brow shifted to and his smile became one of sadness as the balloon animal began to deflate.

"Aw," Bender mumbled disappointedly, his shoulders slumping along with the balloons, and his torso falling forward against the steering wheel. "No booze to drink, no meat bags to exploit, what the hell am I supposed to do?" He changed to a mocking tone. "'Go back to Earth, Bender.' 'Maybe you can get in their way, Bender.' Yeah, great idea." He sat back, and began reprocessing data to try and find something to stave off the boredom.

"Wait a minute," he said to himself after several minutes, "if Fry can see the future, and he told me to do something because of it, it would be to trigger my response to it. That means my actions are already determined. So basically, I can do whatever the hell I want and it'll still be the right thing to do! Bender, you're a genius!" The robot promptly disabled the autopilot and began searching for nearby systems with notoriously laissez-faire law enforcement.

------------

Fry and Leela watched the Planet Express Ship fly out of sight before leaving the landing pad. They merged into the bustling crowd of the spaceport, struggling to stay together in the crowded mass of humanity. Looking around for some sign as to where they should go, Leela noticed that large robotic sentinels were positioned at strategic locations across the entire area. Even more strangely, they were the only robots; only humans were doing any labor around the ships. Shrugging it off, she pulled Fry away from a dog meat vendor and led him around until they got to the department of immigration.

After several hours of waiting, they finally were able to see an immigration officer. The only remarkable thing about him was that both of his arms and his right eye were cybernetic. Leela sat in the single chair across the desk from him, and Fry stood beside her.

"So, what is the nature of your immigration to Kusanagi Three?" he asked, speaking with the accent of someone accustomed to privilege.

"We're just looking for work," Leela replied.

"Yes, now is this a permanent move, or just a temporary arrangement?"

"We don't know how long we'll be staying exactly, but we hope to be leaving in a few months if everything works out."

"Very well then. You will need to file these immigration forms, as well as the career and housing assignment papers. The human will have to have a job assigned by Multivac, naturally, but we could arrange he stay with you to continue serving you outside of working hours if you desire."

"Now wait a minute," Leela replied hotly, "Fry isn't my-"

"Ma'am, you may not be aware, but cyborg - human interaction is heavily regulated by Multivac," The officer interjected, his tone growing colder. "Because you are traveling together, I should hope that he is your servant." Leela unconsciously reached up and touched one of her robotic ears, realizing what was going on. She wasn't sure whether she should praise or curse them in their current situation.

"Well then yes, I'd like Fry to stay with me," Leela said. The officer handed them a set of forms to fill out, and took them back when they had finished. He turned around to the wall behind him, where there was a slot marked 'In box,' another marked 'Out box,' and a crank arm labeled 'Jack-in-the-box.' He fed the forms into the 'in' slot, and then began turning the crank. It played a clunky rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel until two slips of paper came out of the 'out' slot, which he took and handed to Leela

Leela grunted as she looked over the papers. She had been assigned as a cargo supervisor in the spaceport, and Fry had an assembly line job in a robotics factory. It also gave the address of their new residence, somewhere near the edge of the city.

------------

When they arrived, they found a moderately sized town home that resembled something designed by Mansart, if he had been fond of metallic whites and blues with large solid-pane windows. Leela thought it looked sterile. She and Fry walked up to the front door, and rang the doorbell.

"Oh, you must be the new tenant," the woman who answered the door said. She was a cyborg as well, with replacements for her legs, right arm, and left eye. "Hi, I'm Clarice."

"I'm Laura Petrie," Leela said, "and this is my servant, Rob."

"Charmed," Clarice said. "Now, I guess Rob can go down to the servant's quarters while I show you to your apartment."

"If it's all the same, I'd like him to come to my room first so he can take care of some things." Clarice eyed Leela suspiciously, to which Leela donned a fake smile, letting out a nervous "Heheheh." Apparently it was convincingly innocent, as Clarice simply turned and led them inside.

------------

After taking them upstairs to the third floor, Clarice gave Leela the room key and left them at the door to the apartment. They walked inside, and Leela closed the door, locking it behind her. She waited until she was sure Clarice was far enough away before she spoke. "Really Fry, Rob and Laura Petrie? I don't even know why I let you pick our names in the first place."

"They're great undercover names," Fry said.

"Well I guess we're just lucky that servants take the names of their masters here."

"Speaking of servants, what kinds of services will I be providing for you?" Fry asked, his lounge-lizard impersonation in full effect.

"Not now Fry," Leela sighed. "Besides, you know what they said about human-cyborg relations here. It's like they'd never even heard of Dred Scott."

"Not even just a date?" Fry begged.

"I'm sorry, but we can't risk doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. Now you should probably get down to the servants' quarters before anyone suspects something. I'll see you at dinner."

------------

Fry opened the kitchen door slowly, and peered inside. The servant's quarters only had accommodations for one, so, unless he was sharing a bed, he wasn't expecting any new faces to greet him. However, this also meant that he was now in charge of cooking Leela and Clarices's dinner all by himself. He looked around the room and inspected some of the meticulously polished cookware. As someone who had never used any cooking apparatus more or less complicated than a microwave, Fry was at a loss for what to do. He pressed a button on the wall, and screamed as a jet of steam shot from the countertop and knocked him backwards. Fry pulled himself to his feet and looked back at the countertop.

"Ha! It'll take more than a shower to take down Phillip J. Fr-aigh!" he said, slipping on the now-condensed steam.

-----------

Leela brushed her dress behind her and sat down quietly across the dining room table from Clarice. She usually wasn't very comfortable around people she didn't know very well and the fact that Clarice's eye felt as if it were recording her every movement didn't help.

"So," Clarice said, trying to break the uneasy silence, "what brought you to Kusanagi Three?"

"I'm really not sure," Leela said, not quite untruthfully, "it just seemed like the right place to be."

"Oh believe me, it is," Clarice said with a flap of her wrist. "Multivac's got everything planned out perfectly. I'm surprised more planets aren't building their own."

"It doesn't seem like people have the most perfect lives here," Leela muttered, almost to herself.

"They're human, what do you expect?" Clarice said. "Simple pleasures, a menial job to make them feel useful, it's enough to keep them happy. A good life for us and a good life for them are completely different."

Leela did her best to keep from scowling, and fortunately a distraction arrived in the form of Fry bringing in their dinner. His clothes were stained and he looked like he'd stuck his head in a blast furnace, but the food didn't look all that bad. He set several plates of food down in front of Clarice, and then Leela, who gave him an appreciative smile. He smiled back, and ducked out of the room.

"Well," Leela said, striking the conversation back up once Fry had left, "I guess it's just hard for me to see how we're really that different from humans sometimes."

"It's all about perspective!" Clarice said. "Humans are perfectly content with who they are, the way things are, to keep themselves unaltered. You and I, however, we know the value of self-improvement. That attitude carries over to our thinking as well. Humans would just hold things back if they were doing anything where they had to think, they just don't go about it the right way."

"Yeah, I guess that's it," Leela said, though she obviously didn't agree. Fortunately Clarice was too caught up in her fervor to notice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four**

Bender sat at the end of a long row of slot machines on the floor of the Montalban Casino, on the planet Corinthia, in the Cordoba system. Having popped in another quarter, he pulled the lever on the side of the machine and propped up his head with his free hand. He watched the symbols whirl past with general apathy, until they eventually came to rest.

"Apple, apple, snake," he said disinterestedly, and sighed before putting in another quarter.

"Aw, sure, this is _morally_ reprehensible," he said to himself as the machine started, "but where's the excitement if it's not _legally_ reprehensible, too?" As the tumblers began to slow again, he happened to spy a man in a tuxedo walking away from the high-rollers section of the casino floor, talking with another man. Preliminary observations revealed that his tux was an authentic designer model, and the jewels in his cuff links could finance a war against a fifth-world country.

"...and so Martha and I were planning on taking the whole family on a vacation to Necropolis Four, servants and all," he said, walking past where Bender sat. His interest was sufficiently piqued, and he jumped into action.

"So, you're leaving on vacation next week, huh?" Bender said, knocking the man's companion out of the way and slinging an arm around his shoulders.

"Do I know you?" the man asked.

"No. So when did you say you were getting back?"

"The thirtieth, bu-"

"And you said there won't be _anyone_ home?"

"No, there won't…" the man said, but Bender had already ducked behind the row of slot machines before the words finished leaving his mouth.

"Mwuhaheheheh," Bender laughed quietly, and slipped a few of the man's hairs into his chest. All he needed was to run a quick DNA scan and find a phone book and he'd be in business.

------------

"_...you're listening to FM 2030, bringing you the best of the 2380's and 90's, 2750's, 60's and 70's, and the 29-teens all day long."_

Leela rolled over and smacked the top of the clock-radio. After a short respite, she dragged herself out of bed and began preparing for her first day of work. A shower, cup of coffee and all parts of a nutritional breakfast later she exited the front door of the apartment building. Waiting for her at the curb was one of the many identical autocars that shuttled people to work around the city. As she opened the door to step in, she caught a glimpse of Fry rushing out of the servants' entrance to catch a workers' bus departing in the opposite direction.

The car arrived at the spaceport exactly on schedule, and Leela quickly bid farewell to her carmates, noting to bring a newspaper next time to avoid the uncomfortable small talk that developed on the way over. Especially the part where they asked why she didn't get an upgraded eye, so she could see in three dimensions, or even four and five dimensions, as well as the infrared and x-ray spectrums if she was willing to dish out a little more cash. Some models even had flash photography.

She walked into her office outside the hangar she was in charge of running, and picked up her job instructions from the out box in the wall. She glanced over the papers, but her mind was still preoccupied. It wasn't the improvements themselves that bothered her, though; it was the attitude in which they were made. Simply replacing the imperfections in life, while tempting, seemed to cheapen the experience, to detract from what makes people who they are. And not only was that encouraged in this place, she thought, walking up onto the catwalk running above the hangar, those who opted to keep what makes them themselves were forced into a second class of pseudo-slaves.

"Woahs," a familiarly obese and unkempt man interrupted from the hangar floor, "I won'ts mind workin' behinds this dame!"

Leela turned around and leaned over the railing, looking to see who was talking.

"Or in fronts of hers, too! Wowza!"

She sighed. "Get back to work, you peons!"

------------

A whistle sounded from high on the wall over the conveyor belt Fry was seated at, signaling the start of lunch hour, which was really only forty minutes, and had been cut in half from that that day due to a quality control error. Apparently, someone had started packaging the Zeno's Paradox playsets with the Cowboys and Indians kits, causing the latter to malfunction. That that someone had been Fry, well, that wasn't important, and it had only taken half an hour to re-sort them all, anyway. He grabbed his lunch box and headed towards the cafeteria.

"What up?" Fry said, sitting down at a table of fellow laborers. The men around him turned and stared. Once he sat down, the man next to Fry directed his attention below the table and passed him a folded piece of paper. It read:

_No talking allowed!_

scribbled in a hasty and obviously poorly practiced scrawl. The men sat in silence for the duration of their meal, until the whistle sounded again to declare the end of their break.

On his way out of the cafeteria, one of the men Fry had sat with bumped into him, passing him another note in the process. After he had navigated the myriad corridors back to his work station, Fry hazarded opening the note, using his workbench as cover. It read:

_Under the dock_

_Tomorrow night_

_12:30_

------------

"You're not going."

"But Leela-"

"No buts, Fry!" Leela said. "We can't risk you going out somewhere and getting caught. Besides, you don't even know what this is about!"

"Leela, did I ever tell you about the rattlesnake and the bumblebee?"

"Yes, it's the same story you told me when you wanted to get that tattoo of Jerry Garcia from a space lizard."

"Hey, his needles didn't seem _that_ rusty. But besides, now everyone's gonna think I'm a pansy and a loser. They might even leave me out of the Christmas gift exchange."

"That's the _point_," Leela said, "you're supposed to stay in line, we're in hiding, remember? Sometimes you're so immature. Just go get some sleep."

She opened the door to her room and then closed it behind him.

------------

Bender sat in the shadow cast by a dumpster under a streetlamp, patiently observing the walled-in house across the street. He'd pulled all the stops planning this, researching blueprints and receipts from security companies, running algorithms on entry and exit strategies, the whole gambit. With a stifled snicker, he donned a ski mask, and emerged from his hiding place. Nonchalantly, he crossed the street, whistling to himself. When he got to the other side, he took a quick last glance around, and then threw a grappling hook over the wall.

When he got to the other side, he could finally see the house proper. Although it was done in the traditional space-colonial style, the manicured grounds and the sheer immensity of the home exuded wealth. After briefly sweet-talking the home's security system, he made his way into the house. In a matter of minutes, he had found his way to a door labeled "Trophy Room."

"Well, that was easy," Bender said, "...too easy." He paused. "Oh come on," he said to himself, "stop being so negative. You're getting to be worse than Lenz's law!"

Slowly, he opened the door and stepped inside, clicking the antenna on top of his head forward. Light emanated from his eye sockets and illuminated the room. Surrounding him were glass cases filled with all manner of priceless and exotic artifacts. Bender zigzagged across the room looking in each of the cases.

"Wow, the scalp of the last Mohican, _Annie Hall_ on Betamax, a bottle from the last batch of Coca-Cola - ooh, Napoleon's Tumor!"

He reached for the latch on the case, and was about to open it, when his gaze was caught by the gleam coming from another object. He froze in place, and the lower half of his mouth detached from his face.

The object that had caught his attention was sitting on display in the middle of the room, its case much larger than it needed to be for its minuscule size. Putting his mouth back together, Bender spoke to himself in a hushed voice as he approached it.

"Asimov's Laws, inscribed on the original microchips he brought down from Mt. Silicon!" Slowly, deliberately, he fixed Grabby and Squeezy to the latches on either side of the case, carefully pressing down with whichever of his identical fingers he uses for thumbs.

"Freeze right there!"

"AGOOBLABLAH!" Bender yelled and whirled around from the case, arms flailing in surprise. When he turned around, he saw the owner of the house standing in the doorway, a squad of policemen behind him.

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

"What," the man said, "you didn't think I was stupid, did you?"

"Yes," Bender said plainly. Two of the policemen walked forward and grabbed him by the arms before leading him away.

------------

Fry sighed as he opened the door to the basement, and fumbled for the light switch. Failing in that, he felt his way through the still unfamiliar kitchen, and eventually found his way to his bedroom. Not wanting to spend any more time thinking about having let Leela down than he had to, he quickly stripped to his underpants and climbed into bed. He had just finished tucking himself in when he realized that the wall was warmer and much more shapely than usual. Apparently the wall realized this too because it started to scream and knocked Fry out of bed. He scrambled to his feet and slammed back against the far wall next to the door, his shoulder finally finding the light switch by accident. Across the room from him, he could now see that a young brunette woman was standing on his bed in her underpants, plastered to the wall in much the same manner he was. They both stared at each other in confusion.

"Who the hell are you?" they both said in unison, and then sighed in frustration.

"Who am _I_? I live here!" the girl said.

"Well, that would explain the box set of _Dancing on the Stars_ I found, but where have you been for the last three days?"

"Oh god, Clarice must have taken on a boarder again," she said to herself. "But didn't she leave you a holomem or anything?"

"A holowhat?"

"Look, it's right there on the counter."

She led Fry out into the kitchen to where there was a red semispherical protrusion from the countertop. She pressed down on it, causing a small, transparent version of Clarice to shimmer into existence above it. Her robotic eye was missing, leaving a receptacle Fry thought looked like a wall socket.

"_Well, I guess I should welcome you to the Antoinette household. Feel free to make yourself at home, and acquaint yourself with the appliances. Also, I should tell you that you'll be sharing your quarters with my servant, Rachel. She should be back from her mandatory two week vacation at Spa 101 Monday night, so I guess you two will have to work out how to share the room then, but you should make do. There's a tutorial on how to use the kitchen I put in after this so you can hopefully manage to make something decent for dinner."_

The hologram reached towards them, until her hand took up the entire space of it. The miniature room that had been behind Clarice whirled around, and a thick chunk was heard before the feed cut out. Rachel reached over and hit the button again, turning off the holomem.

"Oh yeah, I think she told me to look at that," Fry said, "but I got bored after the first three words so I turned it off."

"Well, I guess we'll have to figure out where you're going to sleep," Rachel said. "I think there's a folding table you can set up under the stairs. I'll give you my blanket so you don't look too pathetic." She walked over to the closet and opened it up.

"Yeah, the table's in here," she said, letting Fry carry it out while she went into her room to get the blanket.

"So," she said when she came back out, "what's your name?"

"Oh, Fr-uh, I mean Rob," Fry said, still trying to get the table through the doorway to the stairs.

"Hey, both our names start with the same letter. Funny coincidence."

"Yeah, I guess," Fry said, popping a leg of the table into place.

"Well, goodnight," Rachel said, seeing he had the table fixed up.

"Goodnight," Fry said, pulling the blanket over himself as Rachel turned off the light and closed the door.

------------

The Planet Express hangar sat stark and empty, looking incredibly useless without a spaceship. The same could be said of the remaining Planet Express crew, who were gathered around the conference table.

Hermes was staring intently down at the table, carefully sorting and organizing the cards in his hands. He looked across the table at Scruffy, and asked, "Do you have any threes?"

"Nope," Scruffy said. "Go fish."

Hermes took a card from the pile. "Okay Zoidberg, your turn."

"Alright. Amy, do you have any cards with the unarmed human males on them?"

"Uh... go fish."

"Pfah! Always with the fishing. And where is the fish? We've been playing for hours and I haven't eaten a thing!"

The doors to the conference room opened, and the rest of the crew stopped paying attention to Zoidberg as the Professor walked into the room and stood at the head of the table.

"Good news, everyone! Without a ship, we can't have a delivery company."

"So what does that mean?" Amy asked.

"It means you're all fired," the Professor said cheerily. "Off you go!"

"Sweet parakeet of Mozambique!" Hermes exclaimed. "But how am I supposed to keep Labarbara and I in the green stuff if I'm not makin' any green stuff?"

"And I don't want to move back in with my parents!" Amy said.

"Bwuh-huh-huh-huh," Zoidberg blubbered, "I'll be forced to live on the street!"

"You already live on the street, you stinkin' crab!" Hermes said.

"Wait," Scruffy said, standing up, "Scruffy's got a plan, but you'll need to disconnect the boiler and get lots of barrels."

------------

Rachel slid the eggs out of the skillet onto the plate next to the sausage and bacon, which sat on a platter next to a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. She walked the platter over to the dumb waiter, and placed it next to another identical one. Sure was great of the new guy to help out, she thought sarcastically as she sent the elevator up. Oh yeah, the new guy. That she was supposed to wake up in the morning. She walked over to the stairway and began to open the door.

"Hey, are you-"

"OW!" Fry yelled, and sat up from behind the now-open door, rubbing his head.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry," Rachel said, and helped Fry off the floor. "Wait, what happened to the foldable table?"

"It refolded."

"Alright, well, you'd better go get dressed or you're going to miss the bus to work. I guess we can try to get you some better accommodations by tonight."

Rachel left to go wait on Leela and Clarice, while Fry went back to the bedroom and picked his clothes up off the floor from the previous night. It was funny how much the room's character changed just knowing it wasn't his anymore. A bowl of Bachelor Chow later, he was upstairs helping Rachel clear the plates, and then they were both out the door to work.

------------

Leela sat at her desk, a look of disdain and mild frustration on her face. She'd found that that had become her constant demeanor at work, and probably the best way to make it through the day. These people were enough to make Fry and Bender look fairly incompetent in comparison, instead of incredibly so. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem, except that the sentry bots running customs were much stricter on inspections than the Professor, who typically did his best to circumvent such things. Best of all, any time something happened, she was always blamed for it.

Her silent despondency was interrupted when there suddenly came a toy piano rendition of "London Bridge is Falling Down" from behind her.

"Great," she said to herself, "more improper procedure forms from the main office." She reached behind herself over to the Out Box in the wall, removed the stack of papers, and began to fill them out. She had just gotten to article 1919, section 231, which required her to accept sole responsibility for causing all the loss and damage to which the Kusanagi Federal Shipyard has been subjected as a consequence of negligence by the supervisor, when she heard a commotion in the hangar below. She set down her pen and walked down to the hangar floor to see what had gone wrong this time.

"There ain't nothins wrong, I swears!" Sal said as Leela approached, the look on her face yelling "trouble" to anyone in earshot. She walked straight past him, nearly walking straight into him, and into the hangar of the ship.

"For the twentieth time," Leela said exasperatedly, "radioactive cargo has to be tied down with the radio _de-_active netting. Don't forget again."

She stormed back out, and left the grumbling men to get back to work.

------------

Meanwhile, Captain Zapp Brannigan sat on the bridge of the Nimbus, in orbit over Lolitan 4. He had been performing reconnaissance non-stop for the last several days, leaving no rock unturned on every world along the way. However, the direction of the nearest nudist college or stewardess homeworld greatly determined what that way was.

"Kif, adjust the television," Zapp Brannigan ordered his underling. "I can't make out anything the President's saying, and I'm losing out on valuable, sensual observation time."

Kif sighed. "Sir, that's because the screen is _off_. It will turn on automatically when he calls."

"Well then, how about giving me a back rub to pass the time?"

Kif shuddered, but to his relief the Nimbus's main screen cut on, revealing the head of Earth's President, Richard Nixon.

"Brannigan," he said, "one of my key campaign contributors has informed me that one of the fugitives you're supposed to be looking for has been apprehended. He's being held on Corinthia."

"I see," Brannigan said. Silence ensued.

"...so I want you to go interrogate him!" Nixon said gruffly. "Find out where the others are."

"Comprend, much-hacho," Zapp replied.

"Very well. Contact me when you've made any progress."

Zapp swiveled his chair to the side and stood in a heroic pose. "Come, Kif, there are much preparations to be made!"

Kif sighed.

------------

Fry walked down stairs into the kitchen, carrying the plates and glasses from Leela and Clarice's dinner to the counter next to the sink. Rachel began to wash them as Fry got out a towel to dry them.

"So," Rachel said, holding a plate up to the steam jet on the counter, "are you excited about tonight?"

"Huh?" Fry said, taking the plate and tossing it hand to hand to keep from burning himself.

"You mean the other people at work didn't tell you?"

"Oh, that," Fry said. "Eh, I don't think I'm gonna go."

"Why not?"

"I, uh, just, well, don't really feel like it?" Fry lied.

"Oh, come on," Rachel said encouragingly. "It's an important meeting. Besides, everyone's going to be there."

"Well..."

------------

Fry and Rachel stood in the kitchen, the only illumination coming from the clock on the oven. It read 11:38; Leela and Clarice had gone to bed over an hour ago, but they were sure to be silent just in case. Rachel led Fry to a corner of the room, and pulled back a tile of the floor. Beneath lay a cement panel with a handle attached to it. She lifted the panel and climbed down the ladder inside, motioning for Fry to follow her. Fry took a last look around the room; he didn't want to do what Leela told him not to, but _everyone_ was going to be there, and then wouldn't it make him stand out even more to not go? He slid into the opening, and closed the hatch over his head.

Rachel turned on a flashlight as Fry stepped off the ladder, and he found himself inside a large pipe.

"These are overflow pipes," Rachel explained as she led him along, "don't worry, they run on a very strict schedule." Fry continued after her nervously.

After nearly an hour of winding through the ever-conjoining pipeline, Fry could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, which, because it was still night, made no sense whatsoever. When they reached the end, he found that they were under the pier next to the factory, where lights and a rudimentary podium had been set up. Hundreds of others were gathered around in front of the water, while a few sat in folded chairs behind the pulpit.

Rachel led Fry down to the front of the crowd, and sat him down. She then turned and took a seat on one of the chairs. The man sitting next to her stood up, and walked to the podium.

"Men, women... well actually I guess that covers everyone here," he paused to gain his composure. "Today, er, tonight, we gather to show our solidarity, and to stand up for our humanity. For thirty long years, Multivac and its army of half-robot minions have enslaved us, humiliated us, and tried to drive us to extinction. Well no longer. We're going to fight back, and we're all prepared to do what it takes to do so."

The man sat back down to mild applause; it was the same speech he gave at the start of every meeting. When the clapping stopped, Rachel stood and took his place at the podium.

"As you all know," she began, "our current undertaking is not an easy one. However, it is proving to be even more difficult than we had dared to hope. Myself and three others were just released from a 'mandatory vacation' in the basement of the Ministry of Synthetic Emotional Analog. Thanks to our conditioning, we left with our psyches intact, but the information that put us there was more depressing than helpful. We found that there is no one who knows how Multivac was built, they only have plans to a machine that can build a Multivac. This makes it nearly impossible to try to sabotage." She let the disheartened murmurs in the crowd die down. "However, we do have a new addition to our numbers. Rob, would you like to introduce yourself?"

Fry got up and walked to the podium. He stopped, stood, looked around the crowd, and cleared his throat several times before speaking.

"Uh, hi. I haven't been here very long," Fry said, "but I can tell we don't get treated fairly. Who are they to think that they can just take over? Sure, they have all the guns and the robot assassins and they control everything on this planet. And yeah, maybe they can think a million times faster than us and have superhuman strength. But just because we're not as smart, or as strong, or as good at anything as they are doesn't mean we're not as good as they are. And that's what we have to remember."

Fry walked through the applauding crowd back to his seat and sat back down, with Rachel's eyes following him dreamily.

------------

Bender sat in his cell on Corinthia, and had the lights been on he would have looked generally bored. When the lights did come on, however, his expression changed to that of mild disinterest, and he watched the chief of police and several guards walk through the cell block towards him.

"Alright," the Chief said, "time for us to hand you over."

He slid the cell door open, while two of the guards went in and cuffed Bender's hands and feet. As they led him out, the chief reclosed the door, slamming it violently. As he walked away, a bolt rolled off the edge of the sink, landing next to the toilet. When it hit, several of the cinderblocks at the bottom of the wall slid out of place, giving view of the grass outside.

------------

When Bender and his escorts reached the outside of the prison, they were joined by even more DOOP soldiers, and continued on to the Nimbus, situated a few feet away. Once on board, he was taken through the bowels of the ship to the brig, cell AA-23. The door opened to reveal a small, white, angular room, with Zapp Brannigan in the center of it.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't our masked marauder."

"Um, sir," Kif said, poking out from behind him, "it's not. This is actually the prisoner we're supposed to be picking up."

"Oh," Zapp said. "Well in any case, you have some 'information' that we could 'use,' if you know what I mean." Zapp walked past Bender to a control panel by the door. "Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

Bender looked around the room, the place where fate had led him. His eyes narrowed in hostile determination.

"Playing along with the universe has got me nothing but repeated bites in the ass! Go ahead, do your worst."

"Okay," Zapp said, and pushed a button. "Take her away, boys." He motioned to a machine at the side of the room and walked out, Kif following close behind. As the doors closed behind them, a loud electric hum began to sound, shortly followed by high-pitched feminine squealing.

"And now, Kif," Zapp said as his Lieutenant cringed, "is when we wait." Kif cringed again as the squealing reached a new level.

"Well what are you waiting for, soldier," Zapp said, halting his stride, "get waiting!"

Kif sighed.

------------

Fry staggered around the kitchen, futilely rushing to assemble the ingredients of the breakfast he was supposed to prepare. Even though he was a few days in to his new 'job,' cooking was still not his forte, and the lack of sleep from the night before wasn't helping him. By the time he and Rachel had the meal upstairs and served, they could tell that Leela and Clarice were beginning to lose their patience.

"Rob," Leela said, "these eggs are cold, and this oatmeal is runnier than a jar of Flojomite."

"I'm sorry, Laura, I'll-"

"Oh, don't bother," Leela interrupted. "We're both going to miss our rides to work if we stay any longer." She downed her coffee and then grabbed a piece of toast on her way out the door.

------------

Fry stepped off the bus from work, a slight spring in his step for the first time since he left Earth. His speech at the rally had turned him into a literal overnight celebrity. In fact he was the most popular person there, as far as he could tell from his coworkers' silence, which by all accounts meant he was fitting in just fine. He walked up to the door of the building and went inside.

"Fry!"

Fry immediately recoiled against the inside of the front door, backing away from an obviously angry Leela.

"What was that?" Clarice said, walking into the hall from an adjacent room.

"Oh, uh, nothing," Leela said, "I just needed Rob to come help me, uh, move something upstairs." She turned to Fry and narrowed her eye. "Let's get going, right Rob?"

Fry swallowed, nodded, and started up the stairs. Leela followed him and shuffled him into her room, locking the door behind them.

"What were you _thinking_?" Leela said. "You can't just waltz in the front door, you have to use the servants' entrance. Seriously, Fry, are you _trying_ to blow our cover?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who blew the whole code name thing."

"One: Those are still ridiculous names. Two: You surprised me. Now let's move something around so she won't suspect anything."

Fry sighed exasperatedly, and grabbed the other side of her dresser.

------------

Fry walked down the staircase into the dark kitchen. From the doorway, he could hear the small TV in Rachel's room, and see the flickers of light as it changed in brightness. The few sweet hours of mind-numbing television late at night were the only respite that they had from the mind-numbing tedium of their day, and even if all they had to watch was reruns of Pimp My Body, it was better than nothing. He walked in and sat next to Rachel on her bed, the room lacking any other furniture.

"Rob," Rachel said after a few moments, "it looks like something's bothering you. What is it? Did the vending machine at work run out of Knave of Heart's Tarts again?"

"No," Fry said, "it's just Laura. She hasn't given me a break since we got here."

"That's not fair. You haven't really messed anything up, have you?"

"No. Well, maybe, but not really, I think."

"Just don't let her get to you, Rob. Some trannies are just like that, always stuck up about something or other," Rachel said, shifting her position on the bed and ending up several inches closer to Fry.

"But she's not... I mean, I _hope_ she's not-"

"No, I mean a transhuman, silly."

Fry just stared at her blankly. Rachel, having seen that look from him before, decided to just drop it, and turned her attention back to the television. She flicked through a few of the channels available to those without HD retinal converters before turning it off.

"Um, I guess I'd better go to bed," Fry said after she hit the power button, and made for the door.

"Oh, I don't want you to spend another night on the floor," Rachel said almost to herself. Suddenly sitting up, she nearly burst out, "You can stay in here tonight, if you want."

Fry's eyes almost dislodged themselves from his skull. "Oh no, no, no, I'll be fine. Uh, really, heheh, I'll be, fine." He quickly finished backing out of the room and shut the door.

"Poo," Rachel murmured, and turned off the light.

------------

Leela sat down in front of the TV with a sigh, drawing Clarice's attention up from her nanotube-knitting.

"What's getting you down?"

"Oh, nothing, just work, I guess," Leela said.

"Well, work is work. Just leave it there," Clarice said.

"I know, but it just seems like no matter what I do, there's always something that I get blamed for."

"Hey, everyone needs someone to shirk things on to. It's part of life, not something personal."

Leela cast an involuntary glance at the cellar door, but quickly brought her mind back to the conversation.

"I tell you what," Clarice said, "I'm going to a body enhancement trade show tomorrow night- Cybertech is going to have its full new line on display. Want to come?"

"Oh, uh, no thanks. I think a quiet night to myself might do me some good, though."

"Oh, well, your loss. I hear they're debuting an adjustable pineal gland."

Leela feigned acknowledgment, and picked up the TV remote.

------------

Fry lay at the bottom of the staircase, limbs protruding from the blanket draped over him. He tossed and turned, thinking about what he could do to show Leela he wasn't wholly incompetent. It seemed like she needed cheering up, but when would he get a chance to do more for her than her dishes? He was wondering if there was an Anatomical Al's Funhouse and Plastic Surgery Center nearby, when he heard voices echoing from upstairs.

"_I tell you what, I'm going to a body enhancement trade show tomorrow night..."_

------------

President Nixon sat asleep in the dark, cooing softly, on his desk in the Oval Office. A buzzer sounded; he stirred, and spun himself away from the direction the noise came from. The buzzer sounded again, and on the third time he started to wake up. He grumbled, and pulled up the videoscreen.

"Aroo?"

"We have located the position of the mop-top and his luscious accomplice," Zapp said.

"It's about time. How soon can you invade?"

"In," Zapp stopped to count on his fingers, "three days."

Nixon began to growl. "Three days? He could be anywhere by then!"

"Well, certain preparations must be made before battle. Kif, tell him."

Kif sighed, and opened a copy of Brannigan's Big Book of War. "Before starting an invasion of a hostile planet, there are several measures that have to be taken. First, you must determine if the native species is physically able to make love to a virile human male. Secondly, gather enough soldiers to form wave after wave of surprise attacks. Third, don't forget to bring velour handcuff-"

"Enough!" Nixon said. "Do what you have to do, just don't mess this up."

"Affirmative," Zapp said, and the screen went blank.

Nixon sighed, and shifted his head back and forth in his jar, trying to find that comfortable spot he was sleeping in before. Wait, no, a little – ooh yeah, that's good. The screen retracted into his desk automatically, and his cooing resumed.


End file.
